Forum Discussion
UEFI -- No bootable device found
So, I have a final solution and my Acer Aspire 3 A315-21-4808 is working fine now. The final solution was provided by Puraw of the Acer Community. Puraw in his comments said that "the Aspire 3 A315‑21‑4808 is limited by its 2016 AMD A4‑9120 platform and the last BIOS version 1.25 (June 2020). That firmware baseline does not include updated AGESA microcode for newer Windows 10 builds. Because of this, Windows 10 22H2 drivers will fail under UEFI mode and only boot in Legacy mode. To avoid instability, forget about 22H2 and install a legacy Windows 10 release that matches the BIOS support window — for example version 1909 (Nov 2019). This build is fully compatible with BIOS 1.25 and avoids the AGESA driver issues seen with 22H2."
Once I knew that I knew what direction to head to get this to a successful conclusion. I cleaned the new HDD, as there were 3 partitions sitting on it, that weren't doing me or the laptop any good. The cleaning took about 4 hours, but it was worth it. I was then able to convert the HDD from MBR to GPT and then ran the ISO I had downloaded a few days prior.
I'd like to thank all those who offered possible solutions. I ended up using them all, big and small, as the solutions ultimately had to be done for one reason or another.
So, I'd like to thank a few members of two communities that are available to us that have PC problems, hiccups, etc. I'd like to thank Puraw and Axxo from the Acer Community. As well I'd like to thank Peytong1180 from the Microsoft Community Hub. Without your help I probably would have ended up going to see my regular PC repair guy.
Once again thanks to one and all.
Hi again;
This is getting stranger as the days wear on. So after reading Peyton1180's reply I was able to convert the HDD from MBR to GPT. I then got the Windows installation (disk) started. It was at 30% and I figured that everything was looking good, so I decided to go to bed. When I got up I figured the Windows installation would be finished. Well, it was finished, but not with the result I hoped for or wanted to see. The screen said there was a problem and the installation couldn't be completed. But, of course, it doesn't tell you what was wrong or how to fix it. MS should have built that into the installation process. They should be able to give you an error message or at least an error code.
So I thought I'd try again to get Windows installed, but this time using an ISO. And of course it didn't happen. About 5 - 10 minutes after I started the process stopped and a message popped up that said "Windows cannot be installed to this disk. The selected disk is of the GPT partition style." I was just a little confused at this point. I thought "So is it Windows 10 can't be installed because the HDD is in MBR format or is it Windows 10 can't be installed because the HDD is in GPT format?" I decided to take a break and thought I'd try again to get Windows installed later on. When I started again I ran the MBR2GPT utility again, to see if that would help figure things out. And par for the course after about 5 -10 minutes I got a new error that said "Unable to run mbr2gpt due to it cannot find an OS partition on disk 0" Now I know there are partitions on the HDD. I ran the DISKPART utility and it came back with Volume: 0 - Ltr: C - Label: System - FS: NTFS - Type: Partition -Size: 100 MB - Status: Healthy, Volume: 0 - Ltr: E - Label: Windows - FS: NTFS - Type: Partition -Size: 930 GB - Status: Healthy and Volume: 0 - Ltr: E - Label: Windows RE - FS: NTFS - Type: Partition - Size 547 MB - Status: Healthy.
When I run the laptop in UEFI mode, with an installation USB drive, I can get into the "Recovery Options" menu. When I run the laptop in Legacy mode I get this goobly goop when it opens up:
Intel UNDI, PXE-2.1m build 083
Copyright (C) 1997-2000 Intel Corporation
This Product is covered by one or more of the following patents: US6,570,884, US6,115,776 and US6,327,
PXE-MOF: Exiting PXE ROM.
No bootable device -- insert boot disk and press any key
Now if anyone can figure out what is going on and what I need to do to get this laptop up and running again I'D be eternally grateful for your assistance in this matter,